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Easter morning…
three silos
on the horizon
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The Heron’s Nest, June 2011
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occasions
(bass drum)
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my heart
encased in a bass drum
Independence Day
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(give up nothing)
Memorial Day
(another birthday)
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another birthday
a hawk comes to live
in the neighborhood
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Incidentally, my haiku are being featured on DailyHaiku all week this week again, starting today. Feel free to hop over there and see what’s going on.
May Day: One Year
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May Day
every nest
has a voice
.
anniversary new cells in my writing hand
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Beltane
in the rear-view mirror
a faraway fire
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A year ago today I started this blog. I’d written a few haiku over the previous few days — something I’d practically never done before — and for some reason felt that they needed to be inflicted on the world. And that I needed to write more — every day, in fact — and inflict all those on the world as well.
I’m not sure what I was thinking. Maybe it was something to do with it being May Day, which has always seemed like one of the year’s pivotal days to me. Well, it is, of course. In the Japanese conception of the seasons, this is approximately the day that summer begins. (It ends, of course, in early August, when you first begin to sense that melancholy in the air. You know that melancholy? The Japanese love that. They call it autumn and get all weepy and happy. Me too.)
This was also true of European cultures until fairly recent times, which is why we call the summer solstice midsummer. The first of May went by a variety of names for the pre-modern Europeans: Beltane, Walpurgisnacht. It was about purification, fertility, all that useful stuff. There were bonfires to symbolically cleanse things, and dancing to get sexy. The harvest was going in, the thaw was finally complete, the layers of clothes were coming off…time for a party.
Here in southern Wisconsin, and also in southern New England, where I was raised, May is the month when you finally feel like you can breathe easy, because now there’s practically no chance that there will be any more significant snowfall or lengthy cold spells until November. (Practically no chance, I said. This year, I wouldn’t put it past May to dump a blizzard on us or something.)
So for those of us around here who spend most of the winter weeping quietly in a corner, the beginning of May is the time when we creep out of our corners and put away the boxes of Kleenex and admit that, just possibly, life might be worth living. New projects start to seem as enticing as new clothes.
Hence, I suspect, my more or less insane undertaking of last May 1. I remember feeling a sense of great satisfaction at seeing my first post go up, with that big “1 May” on it. It made the whole thing seem much more real than all the previous times I’d started blogs, on whatever forgettable days I started them on. And right from the beginning, this blog felt different than all those other blogs, which lasted only until I figured out that I didn’t actually have anything to say, typically after three or four days.
Writing haiku, I found, especially once I started to figure out what haiku actually were, made me feel like I did in fact have something to say, that there was actually an infinite universe of things to say, because, of course, there is an infinite universe — and if you keep your eyes open you will always be able to observe something worth observing, and worth telling someone else about.
I still feel like that. I sometimes go crazy, in fact, from the number of things there are to say about the world in haiku. Not that I have really figured out how to say them well most of the time, but that challenge is always there. Those possibilities delight me. The whole world, passing by in a predictable but novel-seeming cycle year after year, trip after trip around the sun — how could that ever not be enough for anyone to write about?
Haiku can be thought of as time-tellers or time-markers — a large part of their original function was to announce the season that a particular string of linked verse was beginning in — and now that I have spent an entire year with haiku, have written all the obligatory leaf-falling and snow-falling and blossom-falling verses, have marked all the changes of the moon, and come back around to the beginning, that aspect of their nature is beginning to intrigue me more than ever.
The year is a cycle; it’s good to know when you are in it. It’s also good to know when you are in your life. When was before this? When’s after it? Most importantly — when is now? Writing haiku — I won’t say always, because I never say always, and I reserve the right to change my mind about everything — is a way of saying: I was here, then. That was now. And since time keeps flowing, there is always another now to write about. I feel very lucky about that.
*
Thanks for hanging around with me this past year and listening politely while I wandered around babbling incoherently. I appreciate it immensely. I mean, no matter how great I thought haiku were, I doubt I would have kept writing a blog that no one ever read or commented on. Or one of those blogs where people are always arguing and yelling at each other.
Fortunately, instead of one of those sad, dysfunctional-family kinds of blogs, I have the kind of happy-family blog that is constantly filled with the pleasant voices of many kind visitors. It never feels like work to hang out here. Practically everything else feels like work, but not this. (She says, staring gloomily at the pile of end-of-term projects that she’s way, way behind on.)
I have some vague thoughts for fun things we can do together this summer. But right now, I’m a little too busy and sleep-deprived to form these thoughts into coherent ideas, let alone coherent words. Give me a couple of weeks, okay?
Happy May Day. Go build a fire. And do a little dance. Come on, you know you want to.
April 29 (Arbor Day)
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Arbor Day
we carry the tree back out
of the house
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___________________________________________________________________________________
NaHaiWriMo prompt (for Arbor Day): Trees
Moving on:
NaHaiWriMo prompt for April 30th (last prompt!)
Really small things
See this post for an explanation of what this is.
See the NaHaiWriMo website.
See the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and contribute haiku there if you want. (It doesn’t have to have anything to do with this prompt. It’s just a suggestion.)
April 28 (White Night)
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white night
car doors slamming
everywhere
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___________________________________________________________________________________
NaHaiWriMo prompt: Doors
Moving on:
NaHaiWriMo prompt for April 29th (in honor of Arbor Day):
Trees
See this post for an explanation of what this is.
See the NaHaiWriMo website.
See the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and contribute haiku there if you want. (It doesn’t have to have anything to do with this prompt. It’s just a suggestion.)
April 24 (Easter Sunrise)
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Easter sunrise
all the dyed eggs
regain their colors
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(NaHaiWriMo prompt: Eggs)
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___________________________________________________________________________________
Moving on: NaHaiWriMo prompt for April 25th (in honor of World Penguin Day):
Black and/or white
See this post for an explanation of what this is.
See the NaHaiWriMo website.
See the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and contribute haiku there if you want. (It doesn’t have to have anything to do with this prompt. It’s just a suggestion.)
April 21 (Spring Moon)
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spring moon —
at the foot of our bed
the cat shuts half an eye
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(NaHaiWriMo prompt: Eyes)
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___________________________________________________________________________________
Moving on: NaHaiWriMo prompt for April 22nd, in honor of Earth Day:
Dirt, soil
See this post for an explanation of what this is.
See the NaHaiWriMo website.
See the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and contribute haiku there if you want. (It doesn’t have to have anything to do with this prompt. It’s just a suggestion.)
April 17 (House of Blues)
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house of blues
the temptation
to join in
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(NaHaiWriMo topic: Houses)
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Moving on:
NaHaiWriMo prompt for April 18th (in honor of Patriots Day in the U.S.):
History
_____________________________
See this post for an explanation of what this is.
See the NaHaiWriMo website.
See the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and contribute haiku there if you want. (It doesn’t have to have anything to do with this prompt. It’s just a suggestion.)
April 6 (Anniversary)
anniversary
we argue about which way
the snow is falling
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First published in The Mainichi Daily News, Feb. 22, 2011
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(Special thanks to Aubrie Cox for letting me know this poem had appeared in print — after six weeks I still hadn’t noticed. Now go look at Aubrie’s doodle haiga.)
___________________________
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Husband: But our anniversary is in August. And why would we argue about anything so stupid?
Me: No, no, dear, I meant the other guy I’ve been married to for twenty years.
Husband: Oh.
…
April 4: Vietnam Era (Haibun)
Vietnam Era
Baby, baby, wash your hair in gravy!
Dry it out with bubble gum and send it to the navy.
We cling to the safety of a thick tree trunk, the three of us, four years old apiece, peering between the branches in satisfaction as our three-year-old victim cries in confusion. She isn’t even sure what we’re talking about—because, of course, what we’re talking about makes no sense—but she can tell we mean her harm. We mean her harm because she’s young and weak and we want to believe that we’re not. Because there are three of us and one of her. Because we have a sturdy tree to hide behind and she doesn’t. We are filled with blinding certainty and superiority until like lightning our tiny, white-haired, ferocious nursery-school teacher descends upon us, the wrath of God coming to punish us for our sins. “Go sit on the porch for the rest of recess!” she shouts. “How dare you make fun of someone like that, someone smaller than you! You should all be ashamed!” And just like that, we all are.
mute button
the last generation’s war
rages on the screen
________________________________________________
first published in Haibun Today 5:1, March 2011
April 2: Honey (Flashbacks to Moscow, 1990)
February
you bake me a sweet cake
in a sugarless country
.
skiing in Gorky Park—
suddenly realizing
where we’re going
.
March
a snowstorm
settles it
.
April
babushkas chiding us
for our warmth
.
May
blossoming
at last
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_________________________________
Happy birthday, honey.
March 17: Autumn Wind (in Wet Cement)
This looks like it’s from a printed page because it is. It’s from Wet Cement, which is a lovely little conference anthology from the “Cradle of American Haiku” Haiku Society of America conference back in September. Mike Montreuil edited it, Aubrie Cox laid it out (check out her beloved Optima typeface) and Lidia Rozmus did some understated, beautiful artwork (in her usual style) for it. It was a delight to get it in the mail last week and be reminded of that wonderful weekend and so many of the wonderful poets I met.
The title comes from a haiku by Gayle Bull, the proprietress of Foundry Books, where part of the conference was held (and where I really need to get back to, soon, to check out the mind-blowing haiku section, because, ha ha, I don’t have enough to read). It is, fittingly, written in concrete on the ledge of a window in her shop. (Also in ink, on page 24 of the anthology.)
wet cement —
kids hide in the bushes
giggling— Gayle Bull
March 9: What I Lost (Haibun)
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“If you want to see Dad before he dies, come now,” my sister tells me. “You can’t believe the pain he’s in.” I hang up, make the flight reservations and pack. Then, jittery with nervous energy, I note that there’s just time for me to go for a quick run before I need to leave for the airport.
I put my cell phone in my pocket before I set off, in case my sister has anything else to tell me.
childhood summers —
he combs my tangled hair
painlessly
The sidewalks are coated with ice. I try to run carefully. But a cardinal darts from a branch hanging across the walk, a flash of red that pulls my attention into the sky. Suddenly, I’m on my back, pain in every part of me, afraid, for just a minute, to try to move.
But I force myself to my feet and set off running again, even faster now, despite the ice, because of the ice. I’m young, I’m strong, no cancer will ever worm its way into me and break my bones from the inside out. I’m about to get on a plane and rise thirty-five thousand feet in the air and descend, alive, a thousand miles away.
Nothing else can ever hurt me.
deep inside
the snowbank —
a cell phone rings
.
_______________________________
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First published in Notes from the Gean 2:4, March 2011
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NaHaiWriMo, Week 4: On Being Weird
22 editing an elephant gray seems too vague
23 encoding fairy tales </eastofthesunwestofthemoon>
24 ovulation trying to locate the scent of apple
25 menstruation sinking lower in the waves
26 political protest a deathwatch beetle in the drum circle
27 the mouse in the kitchen does he also hear the owl
28 particles streaming from the sun we wait on this rock to receive them
_________________________
Whew. I made it.
I don’t know why this felt so hard. I’ve been writing haiku every day for ten months now. And, you know, sharing them with the reading public. I think it was just that I was trying to do something really different from what I usually do — trying to be weird and experimental, just kind of throw stuff against the wall and see what stuck.
And even though I told myself that this would be freeing and relaxing, I was surprised to find that I actually found it very stressful to try to come up with something Original and Interesting every day that I wasn’t incredibly embarrassed to let you guys see. Well, a lot of it I actually was incredibly embarrassed to let you guys see. This week may have started out the weirdest of all and then by the fifth day I was getting freaked out enough that I actually followed a couple of Michael Dylan Welch’s (excellent) NaHaiWriMo daily writing prompts, which until then I’d pretty much ignored in the spirit of experimental individualism. I just couldn’t take the pressure of marching to such a different drummer any more.
I thought sometimes this month of the title of the physicist Richard Feynman’s autobiography: “Why Do You Care What Other People Think?” This is a question his wife challenged him with when he was very young. Mostly Feynman didn’t care a lot what other people thought, which is part of what made him so brilliant. (The other part was that he was, you know, brilliant.)
So why do I care? I mean … no one scolded me for being too experimental this month, at least not out loud; people said nice things about the haiku they liked and politely kept their mouths shut about the ones that they didn’t. No one is ever mean to me on this blog. My readership didn’t go down, people didn’t unsubscribe. I still felt stupid and incompetent a lot of the time. Apparently I am way more insecure than I thought I was.
This worries me a little, because it must mean that most of the time I am trying to write haiku that I think other people will approve of. Of course this isn’t entirely bad, the point of writing is supposed to be communication after all, so if no one understands or likes what you’re writing … well, you can either carry on in the same vein hoping that future generations will be more enlightened, or you can seriously consider the possibility that there’s something wrong with your writing. But if you’re spending so much time worrying about what other people think that you never actually figure out what you think yourself, that’s a problem too.
Also, I think I freaked out a little at how good everyone else’s NaHaiWriMo stuff seemed to me. A lot of people seemed to take this exercise really seriously and put their best foot forward and come up with superlative work that really blew me away … and then there’s me, sitting in the corner tossing my word spaghetti at the wall, with a slightly village-idiot expression on my face.
Anyway. (She said defensively.) Just so you know, I wrote a lot of other haiku this month that are a lot more, you know, normal. You’ll probably be seeing a fair number of them in the next couple of months. So don’t unsubscribe! The worst is over … and I will be discussing my inferiority complex with my imaginary therapist, so don’t worry about me.
NaHaiWriMo, Week 3
15 bicycle light never stopping to let me catch up
16 multiplication tables all the things I can’t forget
17 peace pipe blowing bubbles beside the sea
18 expired passport all the nebulae I kept meaning to visit
19 protest march spring comes anyway
20 microwave platter my food comes from a dying star
21 resisting arrest unidentified weeds in the garden
_______________________
Week One is here. Week Two is here.
Am I getting any better? … Never mind, I don’t want to know.
February 14 (Your Kiss)
your kiss
the last chocolate
in the box
_______________________
This first appeared on Gillena Cox’s blog Lunch Break a few days ago. It was her birthday, and she very sensibly solicited haiku about chocolate to make her life delicious during the first couple of weeks of February.
Gillena is a lovely person and poet (well, she’s an Aquarius, what do you expect?), go over there and wish her a happy Valentine’s Day and a belated happy birthday.
Haiku North America 2011 – Seattle, Washington
Okay … forget everything else you’ve heard about where and when the Haiku North America conference will be held this summer. Just wipe it from your mind. This is the final, official, ultimate announcement about the conference. Only pay attention to this one. Got it?
Here goes: the official press release from the conference organizers:
Save the date! Haiku North America 2011 will be held August 3 to 7, 2011, in Seattle, Washington.
Members of the Haiku Northwest group have generously offered to host the 2011 conference and they have many exciting plans already in the works, including a harbor cruise. The conference itself will be held at the Seattle Center, at the foot of the Space Needle, providing easy access to haiku writing and walking opportunities such as Pike Place Market (via the monorail), the Olympic Sculpture Park, the Experience Music Project rock-and-roll museum and Science Fiction Museum, and countless other attractions—including fleet week and the Seafair festival, with the Blue Angels performing overhead.
The conference theme will be “Fifty Years of Haiku,” celebrating the past, present, and future of haiku in North America. The deadline for proposals has been extended to February 28, 2011 (http://www.haikunorthamerica.com/pages/2011.html), but sooner is better. Proposals do not have to fit the theme. If you’ve already submitted a proposal, please confirm with Michael Dylan Welch at WelchM@aol.com that you can come to Seattle on the new dates. Speakers already include Cor van den Heuvel, Richard Gilbert, David Lanoue, Carlos Colón, Fay Aoyagi, Jim Kacian, Emiko Miyashita, George Swede, and many others.
Detailed information on registration, lodging, and the conference schedule will be available in March. For further information as it becomes available, please visit http://www.haikunorthamerica.com. And check out the new HNA blog at http://haikunorthamerica.wordpress.com/.
See you in Seattle!
Garry Gay, Paul Miller, Michael Dylan Welch
Haiku North America
Red Dragonfly 
